Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - Jason Redman: Get Off The X - 128

Episode Date: December 10, 2019

On this episode of Inside Look, Bedros sits down with good friend, retired Navy Seal, purple heart recipient, and New York best selling author, Jason Redman.  Jason tells us about his tragic story of getting ambushed in Iraq and about his injuries which forced him to retire from the Navy Seals. They talk about the secrets of “getting off the X” and what hardships can do for you in the long run. Listen and hear why you need to get off the X and become the best you!    “Your attitude determines your outcome.” “Own your story instead of it owning you.” “We can never go back and change the past. All we can do is shape the future.” - Jason Redman   Here’s what you’ll discover: 01:55 - What forced Jason’s retirement from the Navy Seals 17:32 - When Jason realized his operational career had ended 20:00 - Everyone gets ambushed at some point 25:16 - How to get off the X 33:42 - Use life ambushes to better yourself    “The best of the bad decisions is still better than staying on the X.”  - Bedros Keuilian   Follow us on Instagram: @bedroskeuilian / @jasonredmanww   Pre-order Jason’s book Overcome: https://www.overcomebook.com/sales-page32920390   Buy Man Up and get Bedros’s High Performance Leadership Course for FREE: https://manup.com/   Make sure to review us on iTunes: http://bit.ly/theempireshow

If our wounded warriors or our soldiers, Marines, airmen, and sailors, if they got injured on the battlefield, if they showed up at the combat support hospital with the pulse, they had a 90% chance of making it home alive. And I grabbed onto that thought like a lifeline and was like, if I have to reach into my own chest cavity and be squeezing my heart as I roll into that operating room, I'm going to have a pulse. Welcome to the Empire Show. My name is Bedros Kulian, and you are here with me for another episode. of an inside look where we look at the inside workings of a peak performer in life, in business, in athletics, in performance. And today, we've got someone very special, my dear friend, retired Navy SEAL, Purple Heart recipient, and New York Times bestselling author of the Trident, Jason Redmond. Jason, welcome to the show again, brother.

Beh, good to be back with you. Yes, sir. So, Jay, you've got an amazing book, The Trident. I actually read The Trident in 2014. I think it came out in 2013. Yep. You're right. I read it in 2014. You and I met December of 2018. It was pretty cool to be able to meet someone whose book you've read and I knew so much about what happened in your story. So why don't we jump there before we talk about your second book here, Overcome? Because your book was really about leadership, the Trident. And truthfully, as you said, you weren't the best leader and you got a lot of leadership scars going through the seal program. But even then,

there was something that happened in 2007, one of your missions. So why don't we start off with the mission that took place in 2007 that kind of forced you into retirement? Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, the Trident and at its heart and soul is a leadership journey. That's really what that book is. And even though it was my personal memoir, I think that's how so many people can relate to it. I mean, I have so many men, you being one of them that said, man, I was that guy.

I was that guy having these 5% leadership moments. and I talk about that in the book. But basically it follows the path of a young leader that messed up and made mistakes. And thankfully, I had some leadership, some good people that believed in me and allowed me the opportunity to fix myself and finally kind of figured it out and redeemed myself and got my career back on track and headed off to my second combat deployment in Iraq in 2007 was just crushing it, a very combat-filled deployment. for anybody that's studied Iraq or participated in the Iraq war as a fellow veteran.

2006 and 2007 was one of the more volatile times in Iraq, both in the Baghdad, Sadr City area, and then throughout all of the Ambar province. And my seal troop was assigned to the Ambar province of Iraq and just operating almost every single night, hard combat, heavy missions. and it was a neat time for me as a seal to learn and actually be in this leadership position, especially after I'd made these mistakes and come back, redeem myself, really understood what it was to be able to lead guys in these chaotic, hard environments, but more importantly, to be able to trust these amazing people I was working with,

literally the best group of warriors I ever had the honor to serve with. So fast forward to the end of that deployment. You know, here I was. I got my career back on track. I'm getting ready to level up to the next leadership position. As a matter of fact, on that very night, before that mission came down the pipe, I was supposed to serve as the senior commander in charge. So my boss, who normally served in that position, said, hey, Jay, we're going to get you ready for the next level. I want you to run as what's called the ground force commander on these next couple of missions. And then suddenly we got word that the number one leader for the Atlanta Bar province had got. we had been tracking all deployment was going to be in a specific time and location. We started looking at the mission. It looked pretty hairy. We really expected some heavy contact. And my boss came up to me and said, hey, Red, I know you were supposed to run as a ground force commander,

but he said, I don't know if this is the one we want to do that on. And I said, hey, Roger that. And but he said, hey, why don't you be the assault force commander for the actual target take down? I was like, Roger that. Which means you end up boots on ground. I was the leader for, we split into two teams, and I was the leader of the actual target take down.

We had another team that was focused on the external security. And we took down the initial target. Our guys laid out there security, and our leader was not in the building that we initially thought he was. We saw some activity on another house about 150 yards away and made the decision to go find out what was going on at that house in Iraq during that time. the war there was a curfew at night and typically you did not see people out and moving especially after blacked out helicopters came in and you know there was the sound of breaches and things like that

so the only people moving typically after something like that happens are bad people so we decided to go see who these guys were we were going to wrap them up and question them and what we didn't know and obviously all became clear after the fact was we saw some individuals flee out of that house and ran into some vegetation. I took my team and we maneuvered around. Now, did you know, let me stop you there. Did you know that these guys were fleeing out? Like, how did you see?

So our snipers actually saw them. So our snipers were on the rooftop, basically surveilling all around the compound that we were in watching for anything like this. They watched these five individuals flee, run across the street, go into some vegetation. What we didn't know is those five individuals

were the last part of the security element for this number one leader. To this day, we're not exactly sure how many we estimate anywhere from 12 to 15 guys. And what they had was a pre-stage ambush line. And my guys and I walked right into that ambush, unfortunately. So I found myself on the receiving end of two PKK machine guns, which is a very large belt-fed Chinese or Russian-made machine gun, depending on who manufactured it and where they got it. but it shoots a very large bullet about the size of my thumb and my entire adult life I'd been around firearms obviously as a seal and I got to tell you it's much better to be on the sending end than the receiving end. I had been on the receiving end of gunfire before but not like this. I mean this was literally I could feel the concussive wave of the bullets as they were coming by me in the crack and then suddenly of course I started getting hit. I got stitched across my body armor. I took two rounds in the left arm which in when they hit me I thought it at. actually shot my arm off. I took rounds off my weapon, rounds off my helmet. I had my left

night vision tube shot off. I turned to try and move back to where my other guys were, which was about 15 yards back behind a tractor tire, kind of a large John Deere style tractor tire, which was the only point of cover, cover being something that can stop bullets that we had behind us. Other than that, it was nothing but thousands of yards of empty Iraqi desert. So I turned to try and moved back and it was at that point then another round caught me from behind right in front of the ear traveled through my face exited the right side of my nose took off most of my nose blew out my right cheekbone the bullet traveled right under my eye and blew out vaporized my orbital floor what was left in my cheek bone broke and kicked out to the right my eye kind of dropped down

into this newfound hole in my face it shattered all the bones above my eye broke the head head of my jaw and shattered my jaw down to my chin. And then it's, uh, and then it knocked me out. Would you, would you qualify that as a bad day, Jay? Uh, well, I hadn't quite got to that point yet, but, uh, I kind of thought it was a bad day a little bit later. Sure. When, uh, I finally managed to get to the, uh, combat support hospital. The, the firefight lasts about 40 minutes. Um, I'll be honest. I, I came to, I was under this line of gunfighter. which I could tell as I was laying there because machine guns actually every fifth round fire a tracer. It kind of looks like a laser beam traveling through the air, but it's got a bullet behind it or a bullet in front of it.

And so I kind of realized you're in a bad spot. And so 30, 40 minutes, I won't get into all the details. The bottom line is we called fire directly on our position or my team leader did. And my team, I owe my life to him. I owe my life to the Air Force. It was the closest fire mission in the entire Iraq war. How far was that fire mission away from you? Well, to effectively have hit the machine gunners that were in front of me,

which that fire took those guys out. I was only 25, I was 45 feet from the machine gun that had me pinned down. So we're talking 15, 16 yards? Yeah. And I remember listening, he said, hey, incoming fire. And I remember listening to the sequencing of you can actually hear the gun go off from the aircraft and then, you know, there's a few seconds before it impacts. And then the explosion and the debris as it went up over us. But amazingly, we were not fragged is what we call it.

When a bomb or a bullet, you know, large explosive round hits the ground or hits a target, it sends fragmentation out. And we call that ring of where that fragmentation is, danger close. We were way, way within the danger close parameters for that. I mean, the Air Force originally denied the first two missions saying, we'll kill you guys. You know, there's no way. You've got to figure out a way to move back. And my team leader said, there's no way. I mean, there's no place for us to go.

We're running out of ammo. At the initial point, they thought I was dead. And two of our other teammates were shot up pretty badly behind the tire at this point. point. So finally neutralize the enemy, finally bring the meta back in. I am hanging on by a thread and just focused on, hey, you've got to show up at this hospital with a pulse because I knew if I could get to the hospital with a pulse. Where did you learn that piece from? I had watched Baghdad ER, which was a show that was on. And, you know, one night I'm laying there with my wife. and probably the worst thing that we needed to be watching,

but I was fascinated by it. I've always been fascinated by medicine. And so Baghdad ER was showing our amazing military medical professionals healing our wounded warriors. And there was a statistic that if our wounded veterans, if our wounded warriors or our soldiers, Marines, airmen, and sailors, if they got injured on the battlefield, if they showed up at the combat support hospital with the pulse,

they had a 90% chance of making it home alive. And I grabbed onto that thought like a lifeline and was like, if I have to reach into my own chest cavity and be squeezing my heart as I roll into that operating room, I'm going to have a pulse. So I show up. I get in there. They pull all my gear off. And they're in the process of cutting all my clothes off.

And I'm like, I'm good. I made it. I can die now. And I really did. I let go. Because it was the greatest fatigue I've ever felt. life. I have never to this day ever felt anything like that. It felt like 10,000 pound weights were trying to pull me under the water. And I was doing everything I could to just keep my lips

above the surface. It was just this, this darkness. And so I got in there and I was like, you can let go. You know, they'll save you. You know, you made it. You had a pulse when you got here. I got a 90-spent chance of waking up. You did your part. Yeah. So, and right as all that was happening. Apparently, when they cleared all my gear, they missed a grenade I had on my belt. And there was a big commotion, and the nurse that found that grenade yells out in the operating room, he still got a bomb on him. And they did what they're trained to do, which is they clear the operating room. They don't want explosives. They don't want anything that the... Were you alert at that? I remember this very vividly. As a matter of fact, for years...

What runs in her head in that moment? Well, what I do. remember was you've got to be kidding me like seriously like i i'm dying like i've got nothing left like i'm just trying to hold on so i can make it home to see my family and you guys all just ran out of here like seriously and then that's the home thing where i thought what a bad day this sucks the only reason i'm laughing is because i've heard this story so many times and you say it with such laughter that i'm just picturing it all like you did your part man you're like stay awake to stay alive. You get there. You know the stats. You watch back to that ER. And you're like, okay, now it's in their hands. And then they just ran out. You guys ran away. You guys,

because you've got a grenade. You're straight up looney tunes to me. So, uh, so the, the good thing about the story is, I don't know, some poor Marine probably ran in and took my marine, my, uh, grenade. Yeah. And then they came back in and obviously saved my life, which I started a whole other journey, which is the final part of the book that Trident. It is this, It was an evolutionary leadership, but one of the interesting things I learned through that experience was you can lead from any situation, including a hospital bed. And I really learned that your attitude truly does determine the outcome. And people will react to how you act. So if you are a negative curmudgeon when you're laying in the hospital bed or you're going through things, then people are going to push away from you because you're going to make the reality of that situation negative and hard.

So I told myself because of a few things that happened, and it didn't take long. It only took about a week, I guess, before I came to the decision. I'm going to drive forward. I'm going to be positive. I'm going to, as people will often hear me talk about, I'm going to get off the X and I'm going to bring others with me. And that began a whole new journey over the last 12 years,

really from finishing my military career for a couple of years. I held on to the thought that I could still be operational within the SEAL teams, which my wife is really happy. That never happened, which she never told me not to. She never told me I don't want you to do this, although when finally we came to grips with they couldn't fix my arm well enough. Explain that piece before we going to overcome because while the Trident was a great book, I think you've got an exceptional book and overcome. But explain that piece. There's a mindset that you might think is normal. And it's normal for you and it's normal for the guys in your community because you're just so type A driven alpha that I think you were on surgery 30 something.

And then you're telling the doctor I need what 10 or 15 more degrees. Yeah. Can you explain that? Yeah. So with my arm injury, my arm actually did not get shot off as like I thought it did. But it was they could not have done any better job of destroying my elbow. Literally I had a bullet hit me high in the lower bicep and another bullet hit me. and the side of the forearm and it just shattered my elbow and remove yeah exactly thank thanks a lot

so so but i mean as you as you're as you're as are the doctors are piecing you together and you still think that you can be operational i did i was uh so originally the the evolution was this they said we're going to have to amputate your arm and then uh it became my my elbow was so damaged it became fused meaning the bone just grew back i just literally had a brick of bone in my elbow. There was no movement. I still had some nerve damage. Later I had an amazing doctor from Johns Hopkins who was able to get me. He reconstructed my elbow, helped relieve some of the nerve damage and basically I started to get some better use of my hand but my arm was restricted to very limited

mobility. So much limited mobility. I can't bend my arm great. 90 degrees is the the greatest I can bend my arm and I can't extend. out more than 45 degrees. Well, when you think about wearing military gear, we wear stuff on our bodies and even our helmet. So if you try and reach in without bending your arm past 90 degrees, it limits my ability to grab pieces of gear. It also limited my ability to pull my reserve handle on my parachute if I had a malfunction.

So I got disqualified from skydiving, which I tried to show them several times that I had the ability to do it with my one good hand. You are nuts. And my commanding officer basically said, no, I'm sorry. I can't sign off on you on that. So I kept pushing down this road. And finally, I've sought out doctors all across the country,

some of the best doctors in the country. And I was fortunate enough as a seal, you know, we had some pretty good connections. But I finally went to Duke. And one of the top hand and arm surgeons in the country sat me down. And was like, listen, he said, you need to understand something. He said, I'm looking at your x-ray,

and I'm looking at what this doctor did. Andy Agle Setter is the doctor who rebuilt my elbow. And he said, I don't even understand what he did. He said, I don't even understand how your elbow works. He said, it should dislocate all the time. He's like, you're missing key components of the bone structure. But he said, whatever he did is working. And he said, for you to try and go in and change that,

He said, you have a much greater aptitude or a possibility to have a negative outcome than a positive outcome. He said, if you were my son, I would tell you absolutely not to do this surgery. And I think that was finally the point. I remember walking out at Duke Hospital. The son was kind of setting in North Carolina. And I think that was kind of the point where I was like, well, I guess that's it. My operational career is over. And I went home and told my wife.

And she was like, oh, my God. God. Erica's a bad ass. She was like, I would have been on Xanax forever if you had gone back operational. She's like, I didn't want to say anything to you. She's like, I kind of figured it would come to this. And that actually led you down a new path because when I first met you in person, December 5th in Miami, we were both speaking at the same event.

You did a presentation talking about getting off the X because, you know, this disadvantage that happened to, this adversity that had happened. happened to you was a seed for an awesome opportunity for you to have perspective. Like, holy cow, you found yourself, like, you know, as a seal, you're the predator. You go out and put people on the X and, you know, you guys do the ambushing and get the kill or the capture. And in this case, you found yourself on the X and had your guys not done their job well, the Air Force not done their job well, the medical guys, they got you off the X quickly,

pieced you back together. And you came to this, I don't know if it's an epiphany or understanding that you just regular civilians, regular people, everyday businessmen and women find themselves on the X. What is the X and how often do we find ourselves in life ambushes that you describe? Yeah, everybody, and you're right, this was an evolution. It took several years of just research, writing content, working with, I worked with thousands of wounded warriors over the years with my nonprofit, and I was meeting more and more people that had been through some level of trauma, whether it was physical trauma, emotional trauma, sexual trauma, you know, even verbal trauma, you know, over years.

And I just started noticing this trend and something, it was clicking. You know, it's like when you have that idea, but it hasn't fully come together. And one day it did, it hit me. It was an epiphany moment like I got hit in the face with a bat. And I was working with a Marine who had really struggled and he was going through a leadership program we had called the Overcome Academy. me and we were encouraging the warriors to get up and tell their story. There's power in your story when you can tell it and you understand the power behind it and how you can help others through it. And so when you own your story instead of it owning you. So this was kind of what we were doing.

And he got up and he told this horrific story of how he had been in Iraq. He was a medic for a Marine unit that were in a armored convoy moving down the road. The vehicle in front of them hit a massive IED, lifted the whole vehicle up, brought it back down. The vehicle was on fire. He got out of his vehicle and ran up to the vehicle on fire. And he went to the driver's door and there was a young Marine inside and he was trying to get the door open. The medic was trying to get the door open also. But the blast was so big it actually kind of crunched the frame of the vehicle. So it wedged the door shut. These armored doors are super heavy and, you know, the engineering has it's pretty tight. So if you have something like that to happen, it's almost impossible.

So he literally, this medic just tried and tried and tried to get that door open. But he literally watched this young Marine burn to death in front of his eyes. And he came back from that deployment and just checked out of life and just basically blamed himself, survivor's guilt, pain and guilt for never, for not being able to open that door, for not being able to save that guy. And when he told me that story, it hit me. I was like, oh my God, I was like, you're still stuck on the X. You're still stuck on the X from that attack. As a matter of fact, you change yourself to the X.

And then I started thinking about all these people that had told me these stories of trauma and the bad things that had happened to them. And I realized, oh, my God, everybody in life gets stuck on the X. We all have these crushing moments that come along, you know, maybe not at the level of what this Marine experienced, but everybody has these massive life ambushes. And I classify and talk about them, but for this instance in the book, we'll talk about the majors. And major life ambushes are anything that will forever leave a mental, emotional, or physical scar on you.

You will carry it with you the rest of your life. I know in some of the other podcasts you did, someone amazing asked you about, does trauma ever fully go away? Or do you just learn to deal with it and grow from it? And the reality is you learn to deal with it and grow from it. And that is basically the premise behind this, that when you have these things happen and they can be anything from, you know, a relationship ending on the lower end to a business deal that goes bad and you lose millions of dollars to, you know, a young couple with kids and the wife finds out her husband's cheating owner. So now they're moving into a divorce. It can be life-threatening illness or injury. it can be the unexpected loss of a loved one.

These are all major life ambushes that hit all of us. And what I began to realize is that people in life, when they're going through these life ambushes, do the exact same thing that that Marine did, that people do in firefights. They hunker down and they just want that situation to go away. You know, they get overwhelmed by anxiety and stress and everything that's happening.

And we go into denial. And then from there, you know, if we sit on the X too long, it gets too hard to move off. And so many people become a victim. And they become a victim and they get stuck on the X. And then over time, they actually get comfortable on the X. Oof, which then lowers the quality of life, your existence, et cetera. And I'm guessing that's for depression and thoughts of suicide and alcoholism, drug abuse, et cetera, all said any. It becomes an excuse for a lot of people that get stuck on the X.

it becomes an excuse for every form of bad behavior out there. When you try and help them, it all goes back to the incident. Well, this is why I'm that way. Because so many of us, when that moment happens, we look at the pain and the sorrow and the misery. We focus on that. We also focus on what we lost. We focus on the past and how we want to go back to that moment and change it.

And bring everything back to how life was before that moment. But life doesn't work. that way. You know, we can never go back and change the past. All we can do is shape the future. And that is the whole idea of what I learned in my special operations career. In order to survive and even thrive, you have to get off the X. You have to do it as quickly as possible. You have to turn away from, you know, all the overwhelming chaos that's around you. And you have to start to look at, where am I outs? And this book overcome, we break that down into very relatable step-by-step process, I call it the React methodology, how to implement this into your life, your business,

your family, whatever crisis you have going on, whether you're an entrepreneur, whether you work in a business, whether you are an athlete, I don't care. If you are human, this works. And so the idea of the book, as I read through it twice myself, like, how does, because I really love how you explain it. How does one identify? Because oftentimes we don't even realize we're on the X until not that it's almost too late, but until a lot more damage has happened. So how does one realize that I might be on an X so that I can start taking action towards getting off the X or this life ambush? So we talk about in the book, I mean, we go through kind of different things. I mean, are you feeling overwhelmed where, you know, you can't quite cope what's going on? Are you

dealing with massive amounts of stress? Or you dealing with anxiety? Are you pushing people away that you have a major problem, but you're starting to push people away? Are you self-medicating? You know, are you trying to deal with stress by covering it up through, you know, alcohol, drugs, some people do it through other types of risky behavior, sex, anything like that. These are all signs that you're in a major life ambush. Are you procrastinating something hard that would actually move you off of it, but you don't want to do it because you've gotten comfortable sitting on the X? These are all things that once you start to look at them, and it's amazing to me how many times I've given talks, even today, when we were in the... I had somebody come up to me and go, oh, my God, I've been sitting on the X for years now. I've just been stuck in this position in my life.

And I realized I haven't been doing anything. Well, dude, I'll tell you what, when you list off these indicators of what a life ambush is, like I can immediately go back to ones that I've had. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, if I only knew this then, I would have gotten off the X sooner. And then I go through those indicators and I go, God, I know three people right now going through a life ambush, right? And they're sitting on the X. So if someone finds out, all right, man, I'm going through some life ambush. I'm sitting on the X.

This is obviously not good for me. They read that part of the book. What is the first step to getting off the X to overcome that? So in order to get off the X, you've got to react. React is an acronym for the steps you need to take. And there were the exact same steps that we used in my special operations career. And what we did is we just dumbed them down and made them relatable to anybody. So the first step is you've got to recognize.

This is the very first thing you have to do. You have to admit you are in a. crisis and oftentimes it is amazing that people don't want to admit it we want to be in denial we don't want to acknowledge that you know rome is burning around us but the reality is you cannot deal with any problem until you actually articulate it and say Houston we've got a problem so that's the very first one you've got to recognize once you recognize e is you've got to evaluate your assets what do you have at your disposal what do you need you know if you're in a marriage crisis, then you probably need a marriage counselor. And, you know, hopefully you don't need

it yet, but a lawyer or maybe a pastor or maybe whatever it is, you need to identify these things that are around you. No different than when I was in my firefight and I was laying there. I remember rattling off in my head. What do we have? Well, I know I got a Marine Quick Reaction Force that isn't that far away. And I've got, you know, I've got a rover, you know, drone overhead, and I've got an AC-130 gun ship, and I've got my guys in another house. I mean, these were the assets we had. Because once we know what assets we have, now we can start to look at, okay, how do we start to move forward? And that becomes, eh, you've got to assess your options and outcomes. And it's human nature that all of us, you know, it's kind of funny.

We live in denial before we finally come to recognize and say, oh, I'm in a crisis. And then we figure out our assets. And what most people do is once they figure that out, they kind of get in panic, urgent mode. They're like, oh, my God, I am actually in a crisis. I've got to move immediately because they want to relieve that pain and they want to get out of this situation now that they've actually come to grips with it. But so often people will do something too hasty and they will actually put themselves in a worse position. They will pick the very first thing that pops up. And this is something where we, in the military, we call it tactical patience.

We also have another phrase called let the battlefield develop. And what that means is, you, Usually in a gunfight, if you can find a point of cover, you have a little bit of time to kind of evaluate what's going on. Well, most people out there that are in a life ambush, hopefully you are not in a gun fight. So you actually hopefully have minutes, hours, even potentially days. And I would say that some life ambushes are going to take longer to evaluate. If you lose a child, that's going to be months. That's going to be months for you to deal with that grief and to come to that denial and finally to get to

that point where you're starting to look at your options and outcomes. And the good news is you have that time and you will need that time. But it's once you look at those things and you start to assess, what is the best option and what would the outcome look like. And this is a critical thing because people will look at options, but they don't play forward. They don't start looking at where the future, at the future and where they're going to go and what that outcome will look like. But that's what you need to evaluate so that you can decide this is the best course. And oftentimes in a life ambush, it is the best of the bad decisions. So none of them are great. But no matter what, you have to understand, I got to get off the X. So one of these is where we're going.

So the best of the bad decisions is still better than staying on the X is what I'm hearing you say, which makes sense. Absolutely. Yeah. If you, the longer you stay on the X, the X is kind of like Quicksand. And like I told you, there are so many people that will sit on that X for forever. I mean, literally they get comfortable on the X. They get comfortable being a victim. and they will just self-medicate themselves. And it becomes their new identity. It does. So number four is you've got to choose and communicate.

You've picked the best of the bad decisions, and now you've got to choose. When you have a life ambush, I don't care who you are, virtually never does it happen by yourself. Because we all have circles of influence. We all have friends and family and coworkers and acquaintances. Well, guess what? almost always those people get pulled onto the X with you. Your spouse is on the X with you. Your kids are on the X with you.

If it is a business ambush, your team members, partners, whoever is working with you is on the X with you because you're all dealing with that crisis. And often what happens is leaders have a tendency to hold onto the information trying to figure out what they're going to do

because they still haven't quite got to that recognized space. They're still kind of denying. So what they need to do, is move through that process quickly because obviously our team members can help us execute that plan. Not only that in a crisis, people are starving for leadership. You know, it's overwhelming to them. They're feeling the anxiety. They're feeling the stress.

They're just praying. Someone will say, hey, follow me. This is where we're going. And that's why it's so critical to step up. And oftentimes people will think, oh, well, somebody else will make that decision. Well, I hate to tell you, if somebody doesn't make that decision, it's you. is it and you've got to step up and be the leader and that's where you've got to choose and then communicate to your family your people whoever it is in that crisis and the last one you've got to take action

you you've got to execute so many people wait for this perfect moment for things and and especially in a crisis there is no perfect moment you know but movement is life just getting some momentum will get you off the x and sometimes you will actually move off the x and you'll realize well this situation is not a whole lot better, but that's okay. You created some momentum. You go through the React methodology again, and then you're going to have to move again. And you know, you do that hopefully another time, maybe one more time, and now you will be out of the crisis and you will start to move forward. Here's the amazing thing about life ambushes. I try and tell everybody this. People are terrified of them and they hurt. They're painful. They will forever leave those scars. But if you are willing to let it, it will make you so much better. If you can learn from it, if you can embrace it, if you can learn to tell that story to others, if you can learn to have power over it instead of it having power over you, this is where you can dominate in life. I mean, it can become your ability to launch and thrive from the life ambush you've been through.

And that's everything that this book talks about. The first part of the book tells specifically how to get out of a life ambush if you're in one, because that's what we figured there'd be a lot of people out there that were like, oh my God, I'm in a life ambush. I need a manual to get out of this. So that's part one. And then part two, three, and four are all built around. How do you proactively take care of yourself and your team for the long term so that you're

better prepared for the future life ambushes? How do you see the indicators? How do you accept the fact that guess what? Life ambushes are coming. They're coming for all of us. So how do we be better prepared to deal with them? And one area where that's concerned that you really go in depth in the book is about your, you know, what you've discovered, the Pentagon of peak performance. And the more you have those five elements squared away, which our viewers and listeners can get the book and they'll learn about the Pentagon of peak performance.

But when you have those five areas of the Pentagon squared away, the life ambush is not going to be as devastating. You're going to get out of it faster. And you're going to be more resilient in the process. what was your reason for writing this book? I mean, obviously, you do well as a speaker. Your previous book was a New York Times bestseller. Like, what was your motivation behind writing overcome? I had so many people that kept coming to me saying,

Jay, how did you do what you did? You know, you're that guy. You're the sign on the door guy. You know, you're the guy that got severely wounded, and then you launched from it, and then you created your own nonprofit, and you're out there speaking. How did you do what you were doing?

How did you do that? And I'll be honest, in the beginning, I wasn't able to answer that question, or at least not answer it accurately. I would just say, that's the overcome mindset. And they go, great, what is that? And I wouldn't have a step-by-step answer. So this book has been a journey really to explain that. And it took a lot of time in evaluation. I looked at the other life ambushes that I had been in.

I've been in three major life, three major life ambushes over the course of my life. my leadership failure that we talk about in the Trident, my obvious injuries on the battlefield and the subsequent four years and 40 surgeries to put me back together. And then the third one was a business ambush, a devastating lawsuit that ended up getting dismissed, you know, but brutal. And I looked at all those things and I looked at how I reacted in them where I did good, where I did bad. I interviewed other people. There are some amazing individuals in the book, both fellow wounded warriors, military leaders, retired Admiral Bill McRaven, retired General Stan McChrystal. Stan McChrystal tells the story, 34-year military commander, amazing leader leading the war in Afghanistan,

and this Rolling Stones article came out that basically said that some of his staff had been bad-mouthing some senior leaders. And it forced General McChrystal to make the decision. to resign to President Obama. Talk about a life ambush. In a snap, his military career was over. And he tells that story about being on the X and what a devastating blow that was. So, you know, that story really made me understand

and look at all these different things and come up with this idea of the Pentagon of peak performance, the five key areas we have to be balanced in in order to be better prepared for the life ambushes. and then the area about how we lead ourselves, how we lead others, and how we lead always. And it's been an amazing journey. I really think this book is going to help a lot of people because it doesn't matter what you do. You know, there are some people out there that may say, well, I don't know if I'm going to relate to that guy.

You know, he's a Navy SEAL and, you know, he's got those facial scars and that whole grenade story. I don't know about that. But the reality is I'm human, you know. I bleed, I cry, I struggle, I have doubts. And all these other people that I've worked with, it works the same way. And that's the reality of it, because there's one guarantee in this life. You are either in a life ambush right now, you're coming out of a life ambush, or somewhere out there on the horizon, there's one waiting for you.

So the question is, will you be ready for it? Ain't that the truth? When does this book come out? So Overcome releases on December 10th and available in all major booksellers. I had the great honor of reading the audio for the audiobook. So that was a lot of fun. It's in digital form. And right now they can go to Overcomebook.com.

We've got some great specials on placing the pre-order for the book. We've got some really unique things, including we have a deal going for 1,000 custom overcome challenge coins that are numbered. And there's only 1,000. I love that. Now, you've got some amazing, you know, praise for this from our friend of the show, Ed Milette, Jean-Paul Giorno, founder of the Paul Mitchell brand and Patron Tequila, General Stan McChrystal, as you said, Steve Weatherford, Super Bowl champion, kicker for the New York Giants. Gary Seneas, award-winning actor. I mean, talk about the praise for this book. This book is something that I believe every single one of you listening to this and watching the, this show should not only get one copy, but you should get a second copy because someone in your life is going to go through a life ambush. And you probably know who that person is. Maybe they're going

through it right now. Keep one copy for yourself. Give another copy to that friend who can use this to get themselves out of that life ambush. Again, one more time, Jay, where can they get the book from? They can go to Overcomebook.com. And from there, they can go to any of their favorite booksellers, but you also can learn more about some amazing perks that we have. You can find me. at jasonredman.com. I'm speaking all across the country on this. My goal is to help everybody become the best version of themselves. And guess what? It's hard to be the best version of yourself when you're stuck on the X. Amen to that. Guys and gals, if you enjoyed this show and I know you did, do us a favor and leave us a five-star review, leave us some comments. And of course, take a screenshot of this

episode, share it on your stories. Be sure to tag me, tag Jason Redman. And of course, go dominate in life and business.